(Photo by Esther Lin | FCFighter.com)
For as long as he’s been short, chubby and kicking ass in the heavyweight division (approximately, since forever since), fans, pundits and Daniel Cormier himself have openly discussed the possibility of his dropping down a weight class to light heavyweight. DC is fresh off a dominating win over yet another former UFC heavyweight champion in Frank Mir at the UFC on Fox 7 event but the organization’s President, Dana White, says that he’d rather see the two-time Olympian at light heavyweight.
And, oh yeah, if Cormier does decide to cut back on the deep-fried burritos a tad and drop down to 205 pounds, White says that his first fight in the division could very well be for the belt. So, you know, against Chael Sonnen.
“He could drop to 205 and get a shot at the title in my opinion, on day one,” White told a group of assembled media earlier this week in New York. “Look at the guys he’s beat at heavyweight.”
Cormier has recently weighed in for fights in the 230′s. Aside from the fact that he’s got the height of a lightweight, 230 pounds is actually light in the strange, modern world of gigantic super athletes that we live in.
Frank Mir looked like he could have been Cormier’s daddy when they took the center of the cage last week. That is, until Cormier got his hands on his much larger opponent and made him look like a heavily tattooed read-headed step child.
There’s the rub. Cormier has a tiny frame for heavyweight but he so far has found no one that can touch him, including Mir, fellow former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett and current number one contender Antonio Silva.
So, why should the wrestler-turned-fighter try and fix something that ain’t broke? Also, it is well-documented that Cormier missed out on actually wrestling at the 2004 Olympic games despite being the U.S. team’s captain and being favored to medal, because he nearly killed himself trying to cut weight.
The “Wake up and Grind” warrior is doing well at heavyweight, so why should he risk his life cutting down? Thing is, there’s no real reason to believe he’d have to risk his health to cut down to light heavyweight.
According to Cormier himself, his kidney failure and near death experience at the 2004 Games was the result of his walking around too heavy for his entire career and then, at the last minute, trying to lose all of the weight exclusively in the form of quite necessary water. In short, he tried to effectively kill himself through dehydration each tournament and it nearly killed him.
Discussing a “cut” to light heavyweight as if the only way for Cormier to get to 205 pounds is for him to maintain his current diet and then lose over twenty pounds of water weight the day before fighting is silly. Take another look at the man’s fights and, if you can turn your attention away from his amazing take downs and blinding foot and hand speed – which can be difficult, impressive as they all are – you’ll notice something obvious…
Daniel Cormier is fat. That ain’t an excess of water in his gut, chest, back and arms, people. It’s fat.
Should Cormier decide to change his lifestyle around so that he eats let’s fat and calories, he could easily get down to light heavyweight without cutting any water weight. He’d likely decrease his chance at heart disease and diabetes later in life as well.
I guess that’s the point – the idea that fighters dangerously dehydrating themselves right before taxing their bodies in the most challenging sport in the world somehow might allow them to be stronger than their opponent is so accepted and taken for granted that no one seems to have considered a world where Cormier gets healthier, loses 20 pounds or so of pure fat, leaving him far from ripped but at least closer to a “natural” weight for him.
That has to be because light heavyweights like champion Jon Jones, Forrest Griffin, Quinton Jackson, hell, everyone in the UFC, really, all walk around at north of 225. What do you say, nation?
With this new incentive of an automatic title shot at light heavyweight and not being forced with a decision to or not to fight his friend Velasquez, should Cormier lose the gut and go down a division? And, if so, can he or any top fighter (other than Frankie Edgar and Clay Guida, of course) hope to be effective fighting at their walk-around weight without dropping 15-20 pounds of water weight in the last week or two before a camp?